Bottle Shock Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Kevin Smith has finally broken out of the Jay and Silent Bob circle and made a romantic comedy that didn't crumble like Jersey Girl. It's cuter than Clerks 2, but thrives on brief, scene-stealing moments from high-school reunion cameos and Jason Mewes. Rent it on DVD or Blu-ray.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
Most of our beloved teen fare comes when music is mixed with turmoil-filled romance and adventure, and Infinite Playlist is no exception. In fact, it hits a lot of different themes all in one -- the gross-out factor from flicks like American Pie, the quirky music loving of Empire Records, ex meddling like Some Kind of Wonderful, and a rather refreshing attitude towards sexuality. Buy it on DVD or Blu-ray.

The Secret Life of Bees
A film that joins Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson, Queen Latifah, Sophie Okonedo, and Alicia Keys, Kim Voynar said Bees is "a sweet, mostly charming coming-of-age tale that, while it doesn't particularly break any new ground with regards to the filmmaking, does an able enough job of adapting a bestselling book of the 'women's bookclub' variety for the screen." Rent it, if you like that sort of thing, on DVD or Blu-ray.

Also out: Space Buddies and Private Valentine: Blonde & Dangerous

There's a story making the rounds -- originating, as best I can tell, with this post over at Yahoo! Movies -- making the case that this past weekend's minor computer-animated effort Delgo is, to paraphrase, the biggest wide-release bomb of all time.

Is that right? As usual, it depends on how you look at it. If you limit your scope to films released in over 2000 theaters -- Delgo occupied 2,160 -- then the raw numbers back up this claim: Delgo's $237 weekend per-screen average and $511,920 gross easily top the chart of all-time worst openings in that category. On the other hand, just this September a quasi-documentary called Proud American opened on 750 screens and managed an even more impressive $128 per-screen average. And Delgo even has competition this December: just the week before, the Alan Rickman action comedy Nobel Son opened on 893 screens to a comparable $374 per-screen average.

Both Delgo and Nobel Son were distributed by Freestyle Releasing, an independent distributor-for-hire. Freestyle fared slightly better with The Haunting of Molly Hartley over Halloween and much better with this summer's limited-release Bottle Shock. The lesson here, I think, is that unless you've got something that's easy to market (e.g. the PG-13 horror of Molly Hartley) and the budget to market it, an independently-arranged wide (or semi-wide) release is a very dicey proposition. Trying to shove a low-profile animated family film into the marketplace during the holidays is even dicier.

Delgo may be the biggest wide-release flop of all time, but no one will remember its failure like they remember Cutthroat Island and Last Action Hero: not because Delgo was low-budget (it reportedly cost $40 million), but because it was, for all intents and purposes, set up to fail.

They say that the music makes the man.

Actually, no, They don't, but I do, and by "man," I mean "movie". And it isn't so much that the work of composer Paul Oakenfold single-handedly undoes Nobel Son but rather unwittingly serves an accomplice to creating one aggressively atonal crime caper. His thumping techno beats are more fitting for the likes of Swordfish -- indeed, they were at the time -- and maybe more so when accompanying a night of relentless thrusting and occasional pill-popping in Ye Local Nightclub, an activity of more potential enjoyment than sitting through this movie instead. Either way, you'd end up lots of noise, plenty of flash, and little to show for it other than a lasting headache and a lingering sense of regret.

Was it good acting, literary source material, or the prospect of a naked beauty that lured people to this weekend's top box office draw? With a $17,000 per-screen average, Isabel Coixet's drama Elegy easily led all comers, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. Despite Christopher Campbell's negative review, the combination of Ben Kingsley, Penélope Cruz, and a Philip Roth novel evidently proved to be irresistible. We'll see what happens when the film expands to 25 markets in two weeks.

Another film that resonated well in New York, Steven Sebring's doc Patti Smith: Dream of Life, took home $8,080 from its sole Gotham engagement, while wine lovers pushed period comedy / drama Bottle Shock to a per-screen average of $6,145 at 48 locations. The presence of Toby Keith did not scare up very many beer drinkers to come see his comedy / adventure Beer for My Horses, which opened at 91 locales to the tune of $2,483 per screen.

Among the holdovers, immigration drama Frozen River ($8,071 per screen, 7 theaters, 2nd week of release) and adult thriller Transsiberian ($5,192 per screen, 14 theaters, 4th week) did well.

Three other films expanded notably, with predictably mixed results. Wildly acclaimed doc Man on Wire stretched beyond Manhattan into 59 theaters and earned a healthy $4,576 per screen average. In its third week of release, the slick doc American Teen pushed into 76 theaters but could muster only $1,802 at each location. Its expansion will still continue into the Top 60 markets this Friday, per Variety. Period romantic drama Brideshead Revisited unwound into 349 theaters and made $3,034 per screen, giving it a total of $3.3 million in three weeks.

What with the Olympics and the Batman and the pineapple express and the pants, you might be a little overloaded with things to watch this weekend. On the other hand, maybe you've seen all that and want something different. In that case, hooray for the Indie Spotlight! It's our weekly roundup of what's opening beyond the multiplexes, designed so movie fans can keep an eye out for those less-publicized titles.

There are eight indie films for you to examine this week: Beautiful Losers, Beer for My Horses, Bottle Shock, Elegy, Hell Ride, Patti Smith: Dream of Life, Red, and What We Do Is Secret. Here's the skinny on each of them.

Bottle Shock
What it is: A fictionalized account -- very heavily fictionalized, it would seem -- about the plucky California winery that managed to beat French wines in a blind taste test in 1976.
What they're saying: The reviews at Rotten Tomatoes are almost evenly split down the middle. My own take: It's the Two Buck Chuck of wine movies.
Where it's playing: Various places throughout Northern and Southern California, Seattle, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Detroit, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston.
Official site: Take a sip.

Hell Ride
What it is: Executive-produced by Quentin Tarantino, it's Larry Bishop's homage to the sleazy biker movies of the early 1970s.
What they're saying: They're saying they hate it. Ten of the 12 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes are negative, and that includes the two from Cinematical, by James Rocchi and yours truly.
Where it's playing: Quite a few cities, actually; check out the map here.
Official site: Hop on, easy rider.

They say truth is stranger than fiction. To that I say "you obviously haven't seen Naked Lunch," but reality is certainly a fertile ground for film makers and today we've got five trailers for films based, to varying degrees, on real events.

The Perfect Game
I've never enjoyed watching sports so baseball movies usually leave me cold, but this one has a couple of things going for it: a true tale of a bunch of kids rising up from poverty to become world champions, and former drug culture icon Cheech Marin playing a priest. Based on true events, a former coach for the St. Louis Cardinals (Clifton Collins Jr.) takes a group of poor Mexican kids under his wing and teaches them the fine art of baseball, which ultimately leads them to the 1957 Little League World Series. There are the usual sports metaphors: "Love ain't like baseball," says Collins' character. "Yes it is," replies one of his bright eyed proteges. I'm teetering between cute and cringe-inducing on that one, but this kind of rags to riches story is pretty appealing and the period setting is pretty cool. The Perfect Game hits theaters on August 8.

Drunk, hammered, stoned, in the groove... Whatever you care to call it, today's trailers are about being in a chemically altered state.

What Happens in Vegas
I really liked Ashton Kutcher in The Butterfly Effect and I thought he was funny in That 70s Show. Why then does everything else he does make me cringe so? Kutcher and Cameron Diaz play a pair of strangers who have a night of fun together in Vegas and wake up the next day with screaming hangovers and wedding rings. The plan for a quick and simple divorce is complicated when the two win $3 million together. This romantic comedy looks utterly predictable and downright irritating. Dennis Miller is an interesting choice as the judge who sentences the two a period of actual matrimony before they are allowed a divorce. The day this hits theaters I think I'll be busy washing my hair, despite being bald as a plucked chicken.

Animals
This one makes the list today because, as I recall from the book, the story is propelled by a drunken tryst. I had a modest amount of anticipation for this one. I wasn't crazy about the novel Animals, but it was written by John Skipp and Craig Spector, two wunderkind of the late 80's splatterpunk movement -- a style of horror fiction that favors the extreme. I would have thought some of Skipp and Spector's other books like The Light at the End or The Cleanup would have made a better choice for adaptation. That said, Naveen Andrews looks like he'll make a decent lycanthrope, and the oddly hairless werewolves you see in the trailer are surprisingly cool looking. There hasn't been a decent werewolf flick in awhile, so maybe we're due.

Too bad for fans of the book Judgement of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tastings That Revolutionized Wine. Its adaptation might be overshadowed in the same way that Infamous was overshadowed by Capote. Of the dueling films about the 1976 Paris Tastings, Bottle Shock seems to be taking the lead. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film begins shooting August 1 and it has just announced its principal cast. Meanwhile, I haven't heard much about Judgement in six months, despite the fact that it is supposedly the 'official' film about the event and had originally appeared to have the higher profile. However, according to Decanter.com, which has been following the clashing projects, Judgement producers Elizabeth Fowler and Clark Peterson are looking into suing the makers of Bottle Shock. So, maybe it is still too early to tell which film will hit theaters first.

Bottle Shock is not based on any book, but the project was commissioned by Jim and Bo Barrett, who own the Napa property Chateau Montelena. Montelena surprised many by coming in first in the blind Chardonnay tasting in 1976, which really put California vineyards on the map. The film will feature a varied ensemble of actors, including Bill Pullman as the owner of Montelena and Chris Pine as his son, who saves the winery by entering it into the tasting event. Alan Rickman has been cast as Steven Spurrier, the English wine merchant who organized the event, though his character could have a different name if Fowler and Peterson do in fact own all rights to the man's life story. Also in the cast are Elisha Eliza Dushku, who will play a bartender, and Transformers' Rachael Taylor, who will play an intern at the winery. The original script for Bottle Shock, by Ross Schwartz, has been rewritten by Randall M. Miller and Jody Savin, and Miller will be directing the film.

While it might not be the most interesting of topics to some, two new films on the same subject are gearing up to battle it out Capote style for a chance to be the first in theaters. In one corner we have Intellectual Properties Worldwide and Zen Haze Prods. who have just tapped Randall Miller to direct Bottle Shock, based off Ross Schwartz's screenplay. Pic will focus on the 1976 Paris Tastings where California wines seemingly came out of nowhere to beat the French. No, we won't get an actual battle with thousands of troops running towards each other, bottles of red and white in hand. Instead, there's a good chance of seeing a crop full of snobbish snots, their noses stuck deep inside each glass, with lots of twirling and note taking. Killer! Casting will begin early next year with an eye to shoot over the summer.

In the other corner we have a little privately financed indie based off George M. Tabor's Judgement of Paris. Robert Mark Kamen has been hired to adapt, with Clark Peterson (Monster) and Elizabeth Fowler set to produce. And yes, this project also focuses on the 1976 Paris Tastings -- apparently, a critical event in the history of California wine. No word on how far along Judgement is, though there's a chance they'll both be filming at the same time. Having learned everything I know about wine from the film Sideways (yes, I'm that guy), all I want to know is whether or not Paul Giamatti will play a part. God, I loved him and his little Pinot Noir fetish in that film. "I am NOT drinking any f**king Merlot!" Classic stuff.